The Fires of the Forge

Happy New Year!

My friends, I am taking the rest of the week off. I will reflect on my accomplishments, disappointments and my learning therefrom for 2008. And I will plan 2009. I will rejoin with you next year, next week.

I encourage you, too, to take some time to pause and reflect and convert 2008 into tangible learning. Then, make that learning real by mapping it in to tangible changes in the way you approach 2009. That is the power of choice. Leaders choose to learn and therefore to evolve. For others, it is more like Groundhog Day. Here at the resetting of the annual cycle, make the choice to evolve.

Regardless, have a wonderful New Year's holiday.  I will look forward to joining up with you again next year, next Monday, when we will begin to map out what I call the Four Core Skills of Self Knowledge a.k.a. emotional intelligence in action made practical. If the Seven Leadership Capacities are the "yang" of leadership, then the Four Core Self Knowledge Skills are the "yin."

As I concluded in the last post, the epicenter of becoming the type of leader the future requires is mastering your self. From a practical standpoint, you do the Seven Capacities of Leadership and you apply the Four Core Self Knowledge Skills. Together, the combination will work on you and change the quality of what happens through you. Over time, you will begin to transmute your shortcomings, which will transform you as a person, which will transfigure you as a leader. And this, my friends, is what I intend to focus this blog on in 2009.

Happy New Year!

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 16 (Summary 2)

I hope you have enjoyed this overview of the seven capacities of leadership. And while I cannot tell you they are "right", I can tell you they are my current truth and I have given it my all to enable you and me to both glimpse them. Before we leave them, I'd like to condense why we need them and how you can develop them.

Why You Need the Seven Capacities of Leadership

"The human race is at a unique turning point. Will we chose to create the best of all possible worlds?" That is what the cover of the September 2005 Special Issue of Scientific American entitled Crossroads for Plant Earth said. In it, international scientists, lots of them, reached the conclusion that we--all of humanity--face a perfect storm of sorts.

We are facing so many interrelated issues, any one of which could be catastrophic and many of which are probable, that we will be forced to change. That's the turning point--for humans to face external conditions of such a magnitude that we will be forced to change. Up to this point, human beings have done the forcing. That era is winding down.

What I enjoy about the work these international scientists did is they chose to look at it from the positive--they chose to show that we have a choice. That is so true, and it is so powerful. I don't believe an Armageddon is necessarily imminent. I believe an awakening is. And, given that the sum total of our individual actions as human beings has brought us to this point, I believe the sum total of a set of new actions can lead us not just out of it, but to a higher place.

To reverse what we have 'create' will require such a breakthrough that we will not return to the way we were--we'll slingshot far past it. And that makes sense. The purpose of life is not to solve the problem of unconsciousness and the imbalance that creates. The purpose of life is to evolve. So all real problems addressed in a balanced and sustainable way will result in the evolution of consciousness.

And then there is the Responsibility Revolution. Heard of it? It is headed your way. In fact, it is here.

A growing number of people--including the people who are coming to work for you and who are buying services like yours--are waking up. In the 60's, we had the "Me" generation; in the 70's the "Us" generation; in the 80's and 90's the "Them" generation was born.

The "Them" generation includes everyone who is thinking inclusively, who are unshaken in economic up's and down's because they believe there will be enough if we cooperate and collaborate together. They are becoming a force in the market place. Heard of mutual funds called SRI's (socially responsible investments)? There is now over $2 trillion in them, twice what it took to fund the dot com boom.

Best-selling author Tim Sanders, a Silicon Valley thinker and the  Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo during Yahoo's ascent, says that if you are not socially responsible you will be upended by others who are. He predicts billion dollar companies will fall to smaller niche firms IF the billion dollar companies cannot find the heart in becoming socially responsible.

The new wave of workers marching forward are looking for socially responsible companies, and the best and the brightest will be the most demanding. Seventy-eight percent of the young people you have not hired yet say that working for a socially responsible company that uplifts everyone in the companies footprint is more important to them than money.

Such a paradigm shift--from profit to impact and significance--will be a leadership challenge... and unprecedented opportunity.

So you can focus on the negative (change is coming at an unprecedented rate whether we like it or not) or the positive (enough humanity is waking up to see that radical change is required and will demand that the businesses they work for and buy from lead the way). Whichever your perspective, the change is for the greater good. Imbalances will be resolved. And you can lead the way. Leaders who fail to align with and surf these waves of change will be left standing on the shore.

Where does leadership come in?

While it is true that every individual must wake up, leaders will be needed to coordinate the efforts of change. But the old form of leadership isn't going to get it done. After all, that old form of leadership is what was in effect during the period the led up to this point. That same leadership will not suffice at this turning point. That same leadership will neither lead us to make the new choices, nor will it enable us to see the solutions required, nor will it provide the required speed.

The new form leadership will have remarkably different characteristics. I will not attempt to recount all those distinctions here (yet I will soon). But one thing I will say about it is that the old form of leadership was for an individual leader to, through a command-and-control mindset agreed to by a group, coordinate the activities of a group individuals. The goal, if you will, was set by the leader. The leader enlisted people to assist in achieving it. And the leader controlled the process of the activities required to do so.

The new form of leadership will become secondarily about coordinating activity and primarily about serving to help activate group consciousness--the collective intelligence--of entire groups of people and then interacting working with the group to channel that energy in socially responsible ways. A whole new arena of leadership, called transformational leadership, is coming into being now. I will provide you with some resources about the group consciousness/collective intelligence that is arising now.

So why do you need the seven capacities of leadership? Because those are the capacities of the new form of leadership that is arising. Are they complete? No. They are incomplete for two reasons. First, I have not completed the transformation of my self into that new form of leader. In fact, I've just begun.

Second, we won't actually know what that new form looks like until it gets here. But that is too late to start working on it. So we have to start from somewhere. And developing these seven capacities is the point from which I am starting. Whatever you may choose as your starting point, I encourage you to define yours and to start as well. And, regardless of your approach, I believe you will find this at the epicenter: mastering your self.

(c)2008 Otis Woodard

Merry Christmas

I am wishing you all a very merry Christmas! I am grateful to have you as a reader, and my greatest hope for you and for me and for all of us is that we truly do learn to love our neighbor as we love ourselves such that all the separativeness and imbalance in the world is transformed through the individual and collective power of the inclusiveness that we unleash.

And may we all remember, as we spend time with our families and loved ones, that the size of the presents we give is dwarfed by the sheer power of our presence--which is what they most want from us anyway.

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 15 (Summary 1)

In summary, the Seven Leadership Capacities are:

1. Shift Your Perception--To see the new solutions required of today you must see the constraints of your current mind-set, and learn to shift your perception at will to swing a wider arc.

2. Point the Direction--Time is of the essence. There's a place we need to get to. If you keep changing directions you will waste time, energy and resources. That is a waste of your personal power, and you have all the power you need and not an ounce to waste.

3. Have a Plan--To get from here to there you need a plan. More importantly, you need the benefit of planning. Only in having mastered the art and science of planning can you effectively improvise. And you must master the art and science of improvisation if you are going to surf the waves of change.

4. Be Inclusive--The challenges we face will require power to face and resolve. The most powerful force in the universe is inclusiveness. You cannot access inclusiveness without becoming inclusive. The new leaders will embody this.

5. Hold the Focus--All the above is for naught unless you can hold the focus. If you cannot hold the focus, you will continually fall back asleep into the old form of leadership. You must be able to stay awake within the new form. Do so by strengthening your capacity to hold the focus.

6. Evolve--This capacity is more or less an extension of all those that precede it. And yet it stands alone, worthy of its own merit. The faster you can evolve, the better you can both handle and effect change. As you become a vortex of change, change is much less daunting. You can dance with it.

7. Reset--You will need to create small gaps of time in which you can reset yourself. Renewing your self is important, but having the capacity to reset your self is bigger and broader. To reset your self is actually to die a small death. So something new can be born. Warriors can do this in the blink of an eye. It is one of their greatest allies. You and I need to make it ours as well.

The capacites are interrelated, interconnected and are therefore interdependent. To fully activate these seven capacities, you must transmute your shortcomings and your shadow, which will transform who you are, and will result in your transfiguration into a leader you do not recognize. And it will cost you everything you think is important. In exchange, you will have at your command all that actually is.

(c)2008 Otis Woodard

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 14

I can only imagine what aligning with and cooperating with life might be like. What would it be like to muster enough courage to step over my fear and turn myself over to life, to enable life to work through me?

What would it be like to become attuned enough to hear life’s whisper through the drone of my own mind and emotions, and have and hold the focused intent required to bring that whisper through the storm and land it, right here, now? How much less effort would it take than the constant struggle, and how much more could I produce, how much more could I serve, how much more powerfully could I love? How much more powerfully could I lead?

What helps me imagine that is a particular scripture. I hope that if it moves you that you will let it infect you, to run through your synapses with no need to understand what is rippling through you. Perhaps you, too, will hold a question: what it is to toil not and yet accomplish more than you can imagine? If you can be catch the feeling in this scripture, even the tiniest glimpse of the possibility in it for you, and then set out to master your self, your feelings will guide you. That’s my belief, anyway. That is where I am headed my self, I hope.

“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28-6:29

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 13

Let's continue with the second post of three regarding Leadership Capacity 7: Reset.

To Reset allows us to realign with life itself, and to do so as quickly or as often as we need to. It isn’t something we need to schedule (though we may). Time is not on our side. The rate of change is moving exponentially.

What is fascinating about all of this is that to master one’s self means to master emotion, and therefore the mind. There is a very tight correlation between time and emotion. And while time can be measured in ticks on the clock, and we can measure it with atomic clock precision, time is man made. And it does not exist. Time is relative. Einstein proved this. When you reach a point of mastery in working with emotion, you begin to bend time. You can use the flexing of the relative nature of time to your advantage. I will get to that in a moment.

First, I want to pause and acknowledge that of all the seven leadership capacities, I write with the least authenticity about this one. So if you don’t buy this leadership capacity, Reset--well, I cannot blame you. I wouldn’t blame you because I cannot make these words I am writing ring true. I cannot infuse the words with the power of my own experience. All I can say is that I have a feeling for this capacity. More than that, perhaps. A yearning.

On the other hand, I do know that what the way I have produced results in the past no longer works for me. My old approaches have become incremental, and incremental neither will enable me to get to where I am headed nor does it have heart for me any longer. So the leadership capacities of Evolve and Reset are critical to me.

Why have I made the least progress in developing the capacity to Reset? I think it is because it is the loneliest capacity of all. And perhaps the most fearful.

“The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.” Voltaire

To Reset, I imagine, brushes us right up against something that we don’t know how to take in. And I don’t know enough about that to write of it. So I will cut this short here and leave Leadership Capacity 7: Reset where I’ve brought it to now, for that is all I really know about it—it is just a feeling for me at this point and only a belief in the potential of this capacity.

Yet I do have an idea—I have just remembered a quotation that imparts to me the feeling of Reset. I'd like to share it with you, along with some closing thoughts in my next post.

(c)2008 Otis Woodard

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 12

Now we will explore Leadership Capacity 7: Reset. I mentioned several posts ago I considered calling Leadership Capacity 7: Reset something different. Something like Renew. I didn’t and I want to tell you why.

Stephen Covey in his seminal work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People listed as a habit, Sharpen the Saw. That sounds a lot like renewal, doesn’t it? I don’t take exception to that as a needed habit. In fact, I agree with all seven habits.

Yet I am not writing of habits here. Hopefully you’re on to that. I am writing about capacities. And while you need the habit of renewing yourself so you do sharpen your saw, the leaders at the vanguard of the new leadership will find the habit alone to be insufficient. They will need the capacity to Reset.

"So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death."
  Time by Pink Floyd

If you are going to lead into this unknown future we face, more than a good mind, controlled emotion and a collaborative spirit will be required. You will need your feelings to guide you. You will need to be able to feel your way through the dark. You will need to make split-second decisions in defining moments. You will also need to be able to pause when every fiber in your body is screaming at you to act.

In short, you must attune to life.

To attune to life, develop a quietness of life. You must know how to stop and listen to life and to your own self. That will renew you, yes. But more than that, it will allow you a pause to reflect on what has happened, what you’ve learned and what you will now do differently. You will know things that you have no reason to know and you won't even know why you know.

Few people stop to reflect and truly learn more than once or twice in a lifetime. Some never.

A warrior can do it in an instant, and therefore as many times as s/he needs to in a day, even within a battle. The sun never sets on a warrior where s/he has not learned something and therefore goes to sleep that night different.

I feel leaders will become warriors, warriors of the highest sense. Warriors, I believe, in learning to work with time learn to bend time, and in the flexing of it, they create a wrinkle in time—a moment, a day, a season—and in that wrinkle they Reset.

In our next post, we will complete that last thought.

(c)2008 Otis Woodard

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 11

An Afterword on Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve

As I was talking with my wife tonight about an interview she'd seen on Larry King Live, I realized that my overview of Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve is not complete. Why?

I guess it is my 'social conditioning' to avoid mixing business and spirituality, but, in fact, the issues we face cannot possibly be solved without reuniting the two subjects. Mind you, I do not believe religion has a place in business. I do not support religion. Not because religion itself is 'bad.' But every form of religion I have seen as expressed by humans separates--it is separtive.

True spirituality, defrocked of the ideology of religion, unifies and is inclusive. And that is what is called for now. So until I can see a religion being expressed by humans where the stated (or implied) message is not "we've got it and you don't," I do not support religion. However, I will always support spirituality in any venue, including business, so long as the expression of it is inclusiveness (which is the Christ Principle in action.)

There is a darkness in the world today (as there has been for some time), call it evil if you will. (I hesitate to use the word, and not because I am afraid of it but because I believe it is so misunderstood.) And the problem is, we don't know what to do about it. We think we need to clobber it, destroy it, eliminate it or, if that isn't possible to avoid or ignore it and "focus on the positive". I could write quite a bit about all of this points, but I won't because doing so is tangential to this Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve. We all know the darkness is there, that it must be dealt with, and that to all intents and purposes, we have not yet found an effective way to do so. That is the point.

“The only devils in the world are those running around in our hearts. 
That is where the battle should be fought.”  Ghandi

So where is the darkness? The darkness is in you and in me. Yet our social conditioning is to be terrified of it, to deny it, to gloss over it, to lock it away in a room and never open the door, to act like it isn't there, to disown it, or just about anything you can think of other than to face it. But in the end, there it is. And there you are. And there I am.

“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.” Carl Jung
 
"All things, to give light, must endure burning." Goethe

The darkness we see out in the world is no more than a reflection of the cumulative darkness in each of us as individuals. Whether you agree with that or not, just consider it. Because, if that were true, do you begin to see the solution? Is that solution, perhaps, what it means to pick up one's own cross and follow the way of the Christ?

In aggregate, the darkness seems overwhelming in proportion. Like we have to wait for some force much greater than us to save us from it. That's a strategy, to be sure. But frankly, I don't think it is prudent to rely on that as the only strategy. Not when we can also perhaps actively do something. I'd rather to all I know to do, both passively and actively. As my friend Gary says when we'd go onto the competitive field of battle "to leave it all on the field of battle."

The power to work with the darkness is in you and in me: our job is to transmute the darkness in our selves. So let's talk emotional intelligence. All the studies say you should want to be emotionally intelligent for a lot of really good, pragmatic reasons. But that isn't the full picture of what emotional intelligence is.

To cut to the chase, you cannot possibly actually gain emotional intelligence and not end up  transmuting the darkness in your self. In short, all the un-emotionally intelligent things you do stem from the fact you have not yet transmuted that darkness.

"If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you.”

The Gospel of Thomas

Your darkness is simply your unrealized potential, and embedded therein is your greatest gift.

Thus, my overview of Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve was incomplete because I didn't mention that one of the most important reasons you need to evolve is because when you evolve you transmute the darkness in your self. And when you do that, you transmute it for the entire world. That is one of the most important reasons why I want you to care about your own evolution, aside from all the intensely practical and pragmatic business reasons to do so. And if you are a true leader, you know your responsibility extends far beyond the walls of your business. At least, leaders who believe such are those leaders I am writing for and trying to reach.

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image [as the Lord] from one degree of glory to another."   
2 Corinthians 3:18

What does it mean, my friend, to unveil your face? What would you see? How might you do that? Who would you become? Answers I cannot answer for you, but that you can know, from your own personal experience. Isn't that incredible, that you and I can know that for ourselves? About the only thing I can tell you, and I speak from personal experience: you'd evolve.

And that is the Afterword on this Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve. Now I feel we can move on to number 7.

(c)2008 Otis Woodard

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 10

Let’s continue with the last of three installments on Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve.

I left you hanging by saying “So-called leaders today know little if nothing about tapping that power, that force [which underpins life itself]. How do you tap it?” Here's how.

You align your whole self, your emotions, thoughts and physical actions (and therefore your ego, agenda, purpose and will) with that force. It is the ultimate act of surrender. You have to give up (or be willing to give up) everything to get it.

Yet by aligning with that force, you become an instrument of it. And when you do, the reality of two scriptural statements, far beyond most people’s capacity to understand, will stand revealed.

“For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.” Mark 4:25

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” John 14:12

That may be too far out to you. I can understand that. But I am not writing for the rank and file. I am not writing to become popular. I am not writing to keep you as a reader. I am writing from my heart and my passion and to be of service.

When the wave of leaders of sufficient mettle to meet the challenges we face does inevitably rise from the periphery that defines the murky edges between the leadership we know and the leadership that is being born, they will have that force. In their left hand they will touch the evolutionary force of life. In their right hand they will touch the involutionary capacity of nature. And those leaders will be instruments of both.

That is relevance.

So does it sound like you are going to be able to become a leader of tomorrow and do it on your own terms? I obviously don’t think so. Draw your own conclusion. But I don't think we are not going to get through this unscathed. We won’t become the leaders of tomorrow and be the people we are today. It simply isn’t possible.

The forces of life, being inherently creative and evolutionary in nature, will not be at your command unless you are willing to evolve. An intellectual understanding of self development is insufficient. Self knowledge, the only true form of power, is what is required. And that, my friend, is why Leadership Capacity 6 is Evolve.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

That notion is much more than a notion and much more powerful than you think. The man who said it knows it. He freed India from English rule without firing a shot. That leader was Gandhi.

If you live up to Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve you will most certainly need the capacity of Leadership Capacity 7. Want to know what that one is? I'll tell you. Leadership Capacity 7 is Reset. I could have as easily called it Renew. But more on that in my next post.

©2008 Otis Woodard

The Seven Capacities of Leadership Overview--Part 9

Let’s continue with the second of three installments on Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve.

The problems we face today, collectively, are daunting aren’t they? As a result, we are staring at an impending requirement that we smash the old paradigm of leadership because the problems we face were created by, among other things, individuals operating under the current form of leadership.

The only way for you to participate in the change from the old paradigm of leadership to the new paradigm is to evolve your leadership, which is not possible without evolving your self. As I have said before, if you do not, you will no longer be relevant as a leader. Stephen Covey in his book The Eighth Habit talked about this. He said.

“Here is the problem. Where do you start? Where do you start? What are the steps to help move from this industrial age control model—this paradigm—to the knowledge worker age release model? Do you know where you start? Always with your self. It’s an inside out approach.”

A leader called me a couple of months ago, wanting help because his business was stuck. Listless it was. And so were his people. And sales. He felt horrible: he felt responsible. And yet unable to respond.

I asked him what the stuckness of his business told him about himself. Silence on the other end of the line. “I guess I don’t know.” I asked him to think about it and call me back in a few days. I got an excited but somewhat tentative email a couple of days later that said, “That means I am stuck, doesn’t it?”

Bull’s eye.

You are the epicenter of all the change you want to see happen.

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” W. Edwards Deming

So that is true, yet there is more. The reason you must develop the capacity to evolve is not only because you are the epicenter of the change your world requires nor because life is change. There's even more to it than that.

You need to evolve because you need more power than you have today. The problems we collectively face will require more power that we individually possess. The power you and I need is at our fingertips. And you we have not claimed it. And yet we can. What is that power?

Look at life itself. The whole motion of life is evolution occurring within a dynamic state of balance. I encourage you to read that again. That force is ageless, timeless, unyielding, unbending and more powerful than we can possibly imagine. It is both the heartbeat and the moving blood of life. So-called leaders today know little if nothing about tapping that power, that force. How do you tap it?

More on that in the next post, when we get to the last of the three installments on Leadership Capacity 6: Evolve.

©2008 Otis Woodard